Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

178 Divine Mercy: The Heart Of The Gospel gives you, that He is going to punish the world for its crimes by means o f war, hunger, and persecution o f the Church and o f the Holy Father. To forestall this, I shall come to ask the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If they heed my request, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace. If not, she shall spread her errors throughout the world, promoting wars and persecutions of the Church; the good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated; in the end, my Immaculate Heart shall triumph (July 13, 1917). Many o f us are aware of the fact that when the Holy Father was shot on May 13, 1981, on the anniversary o f the first message o f Fatima, after the bullet was removed from his abdomen, the Holy Father asked that the bullet be brought and molded into part of the crown of Our Lady o f Fatima. So clearly does he attest his life to the intercession of Our Lady o f Fatima! Thus we see in Fatima a message of urgency, of conversion, and o f Eucharistic reparation, all conditional upon man’s response. The urgency o f the message o f Divine Mercy is manifested not only in the obvious expressions from private revelation o f Blessed Faustina, but also from our Holy Father’s 1982 encyclical on Divine Mercy, Dives in Misericordia. In this encyclical, also little noticed, the Holy Father warns of the potential new flood due to the contemporary sins o f humanity: However, at no time and in no historical period - especially at a moment as critical as our own - can the Church forget the prayer that is a cry for the mercy o f God amid the many forms o f evil which weigh upon humanity and threaten it. ... Like the prophets, let us appeal to that love which has maternal characteristics and which, like a mother, follows each of her children, each lost sheep, even if they should number millions, even if in the world evil should prevail over goodness, even if contemporary humanity should deserve a ‘new flood’ on account o f its sins. ... And if any o f our contemporaries does not share the faith and hope which lead me, as a servant o f Christ and steward o f the mysteries of God, to implore God's mercy for humanity in this hour of history, let him at least try to understand the reason for my concern. It is